Top 10

Top 10 Reasons RPGs Suck

Originally posted September 2000: We decided it was high time to dig up some of the funniest, most controversial content ever published on GameSpy.com and give those of you that missed it the first time around a chance to laugh, cry and spit venom back in our faces. This classic Top 10 list from eight years ago drew so much heat that it's still regularly talked of here at the GameSpy.com headquarters. One thing is for sure; Fragmaster certainly knew a lot about RPGs!

One cool thing about the human race is that everybody is pretty much different, with the exception of everybody who lives in Okswana, Oregon: they're all a bunch of buckwheat-chewing jerks. But outside of those dirty hicks, everybody has different opinions and preferences. While I enjoy Hong Kong action movies and Half-Life, there are plenty of people out there who think the only good action movies star Bruce Willis and that all first-person shooters are derivative pieces of crap.

That being said, I'd like to present the terribly biased and totally inaccurate reasoning behind my distaste for role-playing games (RPGs, as they say on the street). Before I get started here, keep a few things in mind. Firstly, I'm an idiot. Obviously. Secondly, my hatred of RPGs probably stemmed from the fact that I got stuck 3/4ths of the way through NES Dragon Warrior and didn't even get past the sailing ship thing in Final Fantasy before getting my ass whooped. Which probably means I have the RPG-playing ability of a drunk 3-year-old.

Finally, I got really addicted to an old BBS MUD-type game (for those of you that don't know, MUDs are like EverQuest without graphics, only text, kinda) called "Swords of Chaos" or something and have been dearly afraid of getting obsessed with something so inconsequential ever again. Uhh, anyways, here's ten stupid reasons RPGs suck, in my horrible opinion, based completely on my poor knowledge of the genre.

Top Ten Reasons RPGs Suck:

10. Everybody Talks Stupid

An example of how dorks in RPGs talk:

"Forsooth, merry traveler! Hail and well met! 'Lo, there be a sparkling wench in the City of the Forked River. Pay heed with honor, noble crusader! May thy journey be blessed by Arthur the Mighty himself!"

WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?! Speak American, you armor-clad asswipe! Why does everybody in RPGs need to talk in some kind of old-English slang only the Queen Mother can understand? I don't understand it. I swear that all those cliched medieval phrases like "forsooth" (I don't even know what that means) were made up by some drunken dudes at a renaissance fair like 40 years ago. For all we know, people in the 1300s gave "mad props" to each other and ended every other sentence by screaming, "Bitch, uh-uh!" So what's with all this "thou hast enchanted thy crotch plate" junk? Get with the times, dudes!

9. Classes

Team Fortress has classes all figured out. You got your soldier, you got your pyro, and you got your spy. Those make sense. But with RPGs you've got crap like the half-dwarven shaman, troll ranger, erudite cleric, and halfling shopkeep. What the hell!?!? I know exactly what a spy or a soldier does, but I have no idea what a troll ranger is. Do they wander around national forests looking for bridges to hide under?

And Gnomes? "LOOK AT ME EVERYBODY I AM A GNOME! I BELONG ON THE FRONT LAWN OF AN ELDERLY PERSON BUT INSTEAD I AM BASHING RATS WITH A STICK IN EVERQUEST!" That's pretty dumb if you ask me.

Oh yeah, and what's with the females in these games? Apparently, they don't need to wear any armor: A small strip of tiger hide across their chest is considered to be sufficient protection, I guess.

Oh no! It's a tar troll! Look, I tried to find a picture of some hot RPG babe wearing nothing but a couple inches of bearskin or something so they could put the picture on the front page and get people to click on it, but all I found were pictures from Jurassic Park. Go figure.